Except as otherwise provided in section eighteen of chapter ninety and subject, so far as applicable, to section two of chapter eighty-five and sections eight and nine of chapter eighty-nine, a city or town may make ordinances or bylaws, or the board of aldermen or the selectmen or the town council may make rules and orders, for the regulation of carriages and vehicles used therein, and may set penalties for the violation thereof; and may set and receive an annual fee for each license granted to a person to use any such carriage or vehicle therein. No such rule or order shall prohibit the use of passenger or station wagon type motor vehicles whose gross weight is less than five thousand pounds and which are registered for commercial use, on ways, parkways or boulevards where noncommercial passenger-type motor vehicles are permitted to operate. Such rules and orders shall not take effect until they have been published at least once in a newspaper published in the city, town or county.
No penalty shall be imposed upon any disabled veteran or handicapped person, whose vehicle bears the distinctive number plates, or displays the special parking identification plate authorized by section two of chapter ninety or bears the official identification of a handicapped person issued by any other state, or any Canadian Province, for parking such vehicle on any way for a longer period of time than permitted by said ordinances, by-laws, rules or orders.
Except in the counties of Dukes and Nantucket every metered taxicab licensed under this section shall have the name or the trade name of the owner and the name of the city or town in which it is licensed painted on the sides thereof in letters not less than four inches high and one half inch wide.
Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 40, § 22